Saturday, July 12, 2008

Escape From Your Dragon's Lair

Anya has been waking up in the middle of the night full of energy. She's not sleepy, and she's all happy and giggly and willing to hang out and amuse herself as long as you let her roll and scootch and try to crawl around the living room floor for a couple of hours. The only time she cries or shrieks or otherwise makes us hate life is if we try to make her go back to bed. But it's not like the living room is safe for her: there's the beloved undercouch, the place she heads first, cleverly keeping low till she is in deep, then inevitably raising her head in triumph once she is so far back I can't quite reach her, raising her head in triumph and bonking it on the hard wooden slats, and then there's the crying, the wailing, and me cursing myself for being a crappy mom. Second in order of fun (first in order of danger) is when she heads over to the awful wooden wall/storage monstrosity and tries to open the wretched wolf doors, a feat I thought surely an infant could not accomplish, till I found her shoulder deep in a box of assorted tools one afternoon. And her latest joy is the bookcase, because paper? Especially the bottom shelf full of delicious single issue comics that her mother has loving collected over the years? That is the most delicious thing in the whole world. Anya particularly likes a vintage 2003 Millar-penned issue of Trouble, but she also appreciate the fruity notes of a good Ellis Stormwatch.

Since babyproofing the living room is going to be a rather intense task, involving hundreds of dollars in gates to cope with the unusual entryways, and since we only really need to corral Anya during her late night sessions, Luke decided to create an Anya Containment Unit out of rolled up blankets, electrical ties and clever positioning.